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what do do???

A friend of mine runs a jewellery store, and they were after a new website. She was outvoted on giving the site to me to produce as i was a one man band company as it were, and her staff said they preferred the site to go to a more 'professional' company - which is fair enough, no skin off my nose.

which to me seems like a a normal online store. They are not really happy with the store as mainly its getting no hits, and they basically have no control over what is being promoted on the first page. They complained to the company as the site was being built, to be told that they couldnt make her a site with what she wanted as it would take more time. now shes paid for a site which isnt helping her company at all, as its received no hits whatsoever!

Shes now asking for me to take over the site, but unfortunatly i have no knowledge of asp whatsoever, what would you guys do in this situation? send her on to a trusted company? or try and persude her to start again?

It's hard to believe that her "professional company" wrote such grammatically poor content.

Just because it's a store doesn't mean it needs to be in asp. There are other platforms available.
Determine what she needs done to improve her site and from there decide what skills you can contribute. For skills you don't have, you may want to find someone to collaborate with you on the project. You may want to pm SageWing and see if his company can help you land your project.

Good luck.

Linda Jenkinson"Say what you mean. Mean what you say. But don't say it mean." ~Unknown

Not sure I entirely understand the problem here. They say the store is getting no hits - well that's not a problem with the site software, that's a problem with the marketing. The solution to that is to sort out the marketing, not completely redevelop the store.

From what I can tell, it's a nicely designed, well thought out store. Redeveloping it would be throwing money down the drain. As to the cost, if it;s a bespoke build, that's an understanding price, especially if other services and consulting were included.

They complained to the company as the site was being built, to be told that they couldnt make her a site with what she wanted as it would take more time

Then why did they pay for the site and sign it off - £8K is a lot of money to throw around without being 100% satisfied with the results. If they were not happy, they should have refused to pay until it was sorted. All sounds rather fishy to me, maybe a case of blinkered clients assuming their spanking new site will get automatically catpulted to the top of the search engines with no marketing at all. Certainly sounds like poor communication from both sides.

but without all the facts and both sides of the story, who knows what's going on. but I see this every day - clients throwing good money down the drain on nice web sites and backing down from marketing the things, or simply refusing to cough up some more cash for vital features, then blaming the developers when it all goes pear shaped.

when she asked if she could have promotions at the top of the page, she was told it was not possible, so took it as gospel.....i believe the company in question has probably made several sites on this platform and are just booting them out for a certain price. the site was funded by the government so the jewellery store didnt actually pay any money.

the company doesnt reply to her calls and doesnt show up at meetings. ive told her to complain about her service etc but im not sure shell get very far.

they dont want to do her marketing, or promoting.....they just look like they wanted the inital lump then move onto the next site.....

surely the company should be saying we can do this and this but it will cost you more? are they not supposed to advise you on whats best for your store? are they not the professionals?

can any search engine guru tell me how good the site is search engine wise? (i usually hire in a cionsultant for this stuff)

the site was funded by the government so the jewellery store didnt actually pay any money.

This certainly gets stranger and stranger. Tell your friend you'll handle the customization, SEO and marketing of the site for X000.00. Hire an ASP specialist to put the promotions at the top of the page and make any other changes, and consult with your usual SEO guy for the rest. Charge her money for doing this. She ought to be amenable since she got the site for FREE.

the company doesnt reply to her calls and doesnt show up at meetings. ive told her to complain about her service etc but im not sure shell get very far.

they dont want to do her marketing, or promoting.....they just look like they wanted the inital lump then move onto the next site.....

surely the company should be saying we can do this and this but it will cost you more? are they not supposed to advise you on whats best for your store? are they not the professionals?

They are certainly not acting like it - but this is sweet revenge for not hiring you in the first place because she assumed bigger would be better and allowed herself to be 'outvoted' (Whatever THAT means. Is she in charge or not?). Their non-professional behavior = your opportunity. Go for it. I'd charge a PREMIUM.

Shes now asking for me to take over the site, but unfortunatly i have no knowledge of asp whatsoever, what would you guys do in this situation? send her on to a trusted company? or try and persude her to start again?

In your situation I think I would try and avoid getting involved professionally. Clients like your friend, who know very little about e-commerce and yet apparently fail to educate themselves in even the basics (despite spending £8,000 of their own and the government's money), are invariably going to be a nightmare.

Your friendship will be tested to the limit if you take over in some way and don't get the 'magic' instant results she obviously believes they've paid for. Better to help her - informally, and at arm's length - make progress finding a solution with the present developers. The fact that you don't do asp or seo means you can't really help properly in any case, and that's your polite way out.